Epigenetic age dysregulation in individuals with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia
Richie Jeremian, Alexandra Malinowski, Zanib Chaudhary, Anil Srivastava, Jessica Qian, Clement C. Zai, Christopher Adanty, Corinne E. Fischer, Amer M. Burhan, James L. Kennedy, Carol Borlido, Philip Gerretsen, Ariel Graff, Gary Remington, John B. Vincent, John S. Strauss, Vincenzo De Luca
Abstract
Bipolar disorder (BD) and schizophrenia (SCZ) are debilitating disorders that are associated with significant burden and reduced quality of life. In this study, we leveraged microarray data derived from both the Illumina HumanMethylation450 platform to investigate the epigenetic age of individuals with SCZ (n = 40), BD (n = 40), and healthy controls (n = 38), across five epigenetic clocks. Various statistical metrics were used to identify discrepancies between epigenetic and chronological age across the three groups. We observed a significant increase in epigenetic age compared to chronological age in the BD group. Mean epigenetic age acceleration was also higher in individuals with bipolar disorder compared to healthy controls across four different epigenetic clocks (p<0.05). Despite the study's relatively small sample size, these findings suggest that both individuals with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia may have epigenetic markers associated with a premature aging phenotype, which could be suggestive of negative outcomes associated with the disease. In our future studies, we hope to elucidate this finding further by elucidating the precise link between epigenetic age, symptomatology and disease progression.